Staff
Melinda Wittstock – Founder, CEO and Bureau Chief
Melinda Wittstock is an award-winning journalist, social media evangelist and entrepreneur. She founded CNC in 2003 as a way to turn the Beltway inside out by making politics and policy pass the "why should I care test" for people in local communities across the United States. Her award-winning news service was based on Tip O’Neill’s maxim that “all politics is local,” and is now emerging as the only source for original shoe-leather reporting from Congress locally customized and made relevant to people where they live and work. CNC is now heard by 3.1 million people on 200+ public radio stations – and plays an important role in ensuring voters can hold power to account. There’s little Melinda enjoys more like innovating: she created Power Breakfast, the popular daily "jolt of political caffeine," conceived a way for citizens to directly question their U.S. senators and representatives via "Ask Your Lawmaker" and is hard at work inventing more crowd-sourcing tools. A TV, radio and print journalist with 20 years of experience in New York, Washington and London, her reporting and hosting work spans BBC Radio and TV News, ABC News, National Public Radio (NPR), MSNBC/CNBC as well as London's Times, Guardian, and Observer newspapers. Brought up in New York and Toronto, she graduated with an Honors B.A. in political science from McGill University. She joined the London Times as a correspondent when she was 23, before moving to CNBC Europe in 1994 as a financial news anchor. In 1995 she became a prime-time anchor at BBC World TV, where she covered most of the big breaking news stories of the time, from the Oklahoma City bombing to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the death of Princess Diana. In 1998, she joined ABC News to anchor World News Now and World News This Morning; she also reported for BBC Radio and TV from New York, created the nightly news magazine USA Direct, and hosted the half-hour BBC interview program, Hard Talk. She has anchored at MSNBC and CNBC and wrote for the London Observer. Melinda lives in Washington D.C. with her husband Mark McDonald and their two young children, Sydney and Finn.
Hoag Levins – Vice President, News & Interactive
Hoag Levins is an award-winning newspaper investigative reporter who, in the 1990s, turned himself into a Renaissance digital journalist. Since 1995 he has worked exclusively at designing, building and managing large-scale daily news web sites and related digital delivery systems for mainstream media companies. A former staff reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, Levins has since served as the executive and web editor of Editor & Publisher Magazine, web editor and executive producer of Advertising Age magazine, and founding and executive editor of APBnews.com, a crime and justice news web site. During Levins' tenure there, APBnews won seven major national journalism awards including the first ever given by Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) for "Excellence in Online Journalism." At Advertising Age, along with building and overseeing a website with more than 700,000 registered users, Levins designed and built an in-house video studio capable of producing the daily news show, "3 Minute Ad Age." In 2008, "3 Minute Ad Age" was honored by the national Society of Business Editors and Writers as the year's best audio-visual work in an online U.S. business publication. Levins is a board member of Sigma Delta Chi, the national journalism foundation, a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, and a member of Online News Association.
Elizabeth Wynne Johnson – Senior Correspondent and Host of Power Breakfast
Elizabeth joined CNC in 2007 as its senior correspondent. She lifts up the Capitol dome each day with her exclusive reporting for the daily Power Breakfast radio and podcast segment, a must-listen for anyone who cares about the personalities, policies and power-plays that shape the day ahead in Washington. She also hosts the popular weekly wrap-up, This Week in Congress. Both programs earned top awards from the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists within their first year of broadcast. Though Elizabeth was born and raised in Washington, D.C., her career in narrative journalism began in the West. As the North Idaho bureau chief for Northwest News Network, she covered Idaho and Eastern Washington and became a frequent contributor to NPR and Marketplace. She donned body army to spend time with soldiers training for Iraq. She talked her way into the home of a polygamous family in Canada. Her radio stories have earned top awards from Public Radio News Directors’ Inc., the Society of Professional Journalists, the Radio-Television News Directors’ Association, Idaho Press Club and the Oregon Associated Press. Elizabeth has an M.A. in Documentary Filmmaking from Stanford University and a B.A. in Political Science from Wellesley College. She also spent two years as a Research Associate at Harvard Business School, where she wrote case studies and contributed to two books on corporate strategy.
Manuel Quinones, Reporter
Manuel Quinones is a multimedia journalist with a keen political eye and talent for asking questions that get politicians off their prepared scripts. Fully bilingual, he reports in English and Spanish. Manuel came to Capitol News Connection in June of 2009, and has focused on covering the immigration debate and how health care reform, education and other issues and policies impact the Hispanic community. He’s also tested lawmakers’ financial knowledge, with investigations on regulation of the financial markets and government oversight of the massive Wall Street bailout. Before coming to CNC, Manuel covered the 2008 election campaign and government while at WSET-TV in Lynchburg-Roanoke, Va., and KMIZ-TV in Columbia-Jefferson City, Mo. Memorable stories include an in-depth look at illegal immigration and an award-winning report on the politics behind gas prices. Manuel has an M.A. in political science from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a B.A. in broadcast journalism from American University, where he also completed a minor in international relations. While in college, Manuel worked and interned all over Washington, D.C., including Capitol Hill, the White House, WJLA-TV and the Washington bureau of the Belo TV stations. Manuel is originally from Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. He’s an avid reader of history and current events.
Sara Sciammacco, Reporter
Sara joined Capitol News Connection in May 2007, where she has focused her reporting on health care reform, rural issues and agriculture, as well as issues related to the economy, energy and the environment. She covered the 2009 presidential inauguration, the Republican National Convention, and the New Hampshire presidential primary. She is also a National Press Foundation Paul Miller fellow. Prior to working at CNC, Sara was a television reporter at New England Cable News in Boston. She also held television reporting positions at WJAR-TV in Providence, R.I. and KOTA-TV in Rapid City, S.D. She began her career as news director and morning anchor at WSAR-AM in Fall River, Mass. She holds a degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland-College Park.
Paul Barton, Political Reporter
Paul Barton, reporter for the website and print clients, came to Capitol News Connection with almost 20 years experience covering Washington from a regional angle. He was Washington bureau chief of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for eight years. His investigative reporting included an award-winning piece about an Arkansas congressman using a questionable family farming arrangement to reap nearly $800,000 in federal subsidies over a 10-year span. During the 1990s, he won several awards while reporting out of Gannett Co.'s Washington Bureau, where he was Washington correspondent for The Cincinnati Enquirer for seven years. He has also reported for The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, Arkansas Times and The Hedge Fund Law Report. Barton graduated magna cum laude from Texas A&M University. He has a graduate degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin.
Ana Radelat, Reporter
Ana Radelat is a longtime Washington correspondent who has covered politics and policy in the nation's capitol for dozens of newspapers, including USA Today, The Miami Herald, The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, and Shreveport Times. Besides covering Capitol Hill, the federal agencies and the Supreme Court, Radelat has also written about foreign affairs, especially U.S. policy toward Latin America. She's a veteran political writer, covering campaigns and national party conventions since the mid-1980s. Radelat has also worked in broadcasting, as a writer for CNN’s anchor desk. As part of her coverage of the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast, Radelat was first to report the health hazards posed by high levels of formaldehyde in trailers used as disaster housing. She's won several Associated Press prizes and her recent coverage of Congress' efforts to reform the nation's health care system has won awards. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s School of Journalism.
Bryan Hayes, Technical Operations Manager
Bryan Hayes is CNC's in-house tech-guru. On any given day, he can be found troubleshooting audio or IT challenges in our booths at the Capitol or CNC studio. When he isn't helping CNC reporters sound their best, he is fixing computers and making sure the Web site runs smoothly. Bryan works closely with CEO Melinda Wittstock to manage Web development. From helping to launch the original and new CNC and Ask Your Lawmaker sites to overseeing numerous widget iterations, Bryan has been integral to CNC's transition to a full service multimedia company. He began his career studying filmmaking, audio engineering at Emerson College in Boston, where he also received a BFA in creative writing and publishing. While attending Emerson, Bryan hosted the Jazz Oasis and created the Overnight Experimental Show, airing weekly on Boston’s oldest public radio station, WERS. After graduating, Bryan worked as a senior production assistant at Interlock Media, where he produced the credit sequence for the film "Turned Out: Sexual Assault Behind Bars," and provided pre-production research for "Faith in the Big House." He interned at Nashville Public Television where he researched, field gaffed, and logged interviews for "Memories of Downtown Nashville." In June 2005, Bryan moved to Washington, D.C. to intern for Capitol News Connection. As an intern, Bryan worked with CNC reporters tracking floor debate, interviewed members of Congress and produced stories. During his reporting internship, he covered faith-based initiatives, coastal drilling, fuel additives, and two Supreme Court confirmations. Bryan left CNC to work for NewsHour Extra, the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Web site for students and teachers. He maintained and updated Extra and wrote articles about Earth Day, farm to school lunch programs, and cities that offer free wireless Internet. Bryan returned to CNC to be the technical operations assistant, taking over CNC’s technical operations in 2007 and now working with the management team to develop new Web applications for CNC content and to prepare the organization for further growth.
Phil Shuman, Advertising Sales
Phil Shuman is an internationally-recognized expert in the analysis and development of corporate sponsorships and event-based marketing programs, with particular expertise in the field of public broadcasting. He pioneered the use of PBS sponsorships in support of marketing, business and corporate objectives, generating nearly $100 million in underwriting and support program activities to date. Ground-breaking projects have ranged from public television's This Old House (Owens Corning) and In Performance at the White House (AT&T) to public radio's drive time franchise, Marketplace (15 years on behalf of GE). He is the author of The Power of Perceptual Marketing, awarded a top prize by the European Society for Marketing Research.
Advisors
Jim Russell
Jim Russell is the founder of Marketplace, helped create NPR’s All Things Considered and the concept for PRI’s The World. He is an award-winning journalist (Peabody, multiple DuPont Columbia, and a national TV Emmy) and seasoned executive who has created and managed successful programs for all three public radio networks (NPR, PRI, APM) and PBS. Russell is now the President of Jim Russell Productions, where he continues to create new programs for public media (local and national) and advises program production companies such as CNC and stations on production, management, budgeting, marketing, and partnering. Russell has been working with CNC since January, 2007.
Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Deborah Elizabeth Finn lives to bring resources and needs together seamlessly in the non-profit sector, mostly through strategic use of information and communication technologies. She loves everything about her work except being an independent consultant, and would much rather be a cog in a machine. Her past and current clients include Capitol News Connection Rhode Island Foundation, Third Sector New England, the Public Conversations Project, Changing The Present, Social Markets, Earth Track, the Food Project, Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, Amity360, IDEAS Boston, the Data Collaborative, and the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network. She is a founding member of the Information Systems Forum, the Ethos Roundtable, Mission-Based Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Nonprofit Technology Working Group, and the Boston Technobabes. She holds degrees from Bennington College and Harvard University, and her spare time she captions photographs for lolnptech.org, reads Victorian literature, listens to counter-reformation liturgical music, and indulges her compulsion to introduce everyone on the planet to everyone else.
